


Impatience

by inkstainedwretch



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Armand pretends he doesn't have feelings, Blood Drinking, Blood Play, Canon-Typical Violence, Daniel is Mortal, M/M, Murder made to look like a suicide, Original Character Death(s), Vampire Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 05:35:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10678746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedwretch/pseuds/inkstainedwretch
Summary: Armand decides he's done watching, tonight.(Set during the beginning of their section at Part I of QotD, when Daniel is mortal.)





	Impatience

**Author's Note:**

> I have not read any VC books past Body Thief.

The girl’s hair is the same color as mine.

That’s what attracted me to her, in the beginning. There’s something so lovely, so, so lovely, seeing the little ones fall apart under his touch. The ones with the pale, mortal skin, with auburn curls and, if fortune favors us, the same little nose and bright brown eyes. They can be whatever gender they like. What matters is the shape, the color.

My mortal self would have had to spend a considerable amount of time in the sun to achieve the freckles she has. There’s a roundness to her cheeks reminiscent of my even younger years. But, her hair is nearly identical to mine, though hers is longer. She has the small nose, the brown eyes. Under her makeup, she isn’t quite as sun-bronzed as she wants to look. Under her bubbly demeanor, she wants nothing more than a gentle death.

God, I cannot wait to kill her.

That’s the sweetest part of these little doubles we find. The big death that follows the little ones. The look in Daniel’s eyes, the way his imagination spins and spins, as he watches it. That will come later. Right now, her lacquered fingernails are dragging at the sheets, her head is rolling to the side, and down between her legs, still clothed, oh what a gentleman, is Daniel. His mouth is sealed around her, his hands lifting her from underneath, and from the movement of the muscles in his face, I can see his talented tongue doing its practiced dance.

My eyes drag over the mortal girl’s body, the places on her skin where her blood can’t help but rise. Beautiful red and pink in spilled-wine patterns across her sides, her stomach, the great swell of her breasts. They move, just a little, with her shallow breath. They’re quite beautiful, really, the brown nipples like medallions of ruched silk, the upward curve helped along by simple gravity. One of Daniel’s hands reaches up to caress the left – she’s very short, our dear victim; he can reach almost as far as her shoulder – and she gasps in delight, tilting up into the touch.

Daniel is looking right at me, when my attention turns to him. I merely smile. Oh, my predictable Daniel, watching where my eyes are drawn and following with his touch. Who is the one making love to her, then? Who is it he touches? It drives him mad. Every time, it drives him mad. I can all but feel his body temperature from my chair.

The girl’s eyes open, and she looks down at him, a greedy smile pulling at her lips. Such sticky lip gloss she’s wearing. One more thing to excise from Daniel’s mouth before I kiss him.

“You’re really good at this,” she says, her voice pulled tight into the nasal, almost petulant whine this decade finds arousing. It’s a pity, honestly; her conversation earlier was downright musical.

Daniel knows better than to speak, but I watch as his movements pick up speed, and his hands grip her with strength sufficient to make her head fall back onto the pillow. She works both hands into his hair, and it takes some effort not to laugh as the jangling bracelets she never did remove fall onto his head.

She breaks into a series of gasping proclamations, none of which I can be bothered to decipher, but they seem to consist mostly of obscenities and religious interjections. It doesn’t really matter; I know what they mean. The tilt of her hips and the short interruptions in her breathing tell me everything. It’s good to see, because I’m not feeling especially patient, tonight. On other occasions, I might be disappointed at the brevity, thankful this one is a girl, so her body might give us a few more of these performances.

Her head snaps to one side, sending her hair flying into her face, and as she starts to wail and shudder, all I can see is the veins in her neck. Her pulse is hammering, climbing rapidly until it’s breathlessly, ecstatically quick, and I can see it popping under her jaw. Oh, she is mine, she is _mine_.

Daniel releases her as soon as she drops, knowing from practice she won’t want to be touched for a moment. His hair is a mess. His gaze alone could burn this whole city block to the ground. I want quite badly to touch him, and I know he wants even more badly for me to do it, but that comes later. That comes after I’ve had my fun.

I slide onto the bed beside her, looking down at those brown eyes, at those auburn curls. She’s panting for breath still, but she seems to be waking from it. Daniel’s eyes go wide, because he knows what comes next. He’s surprised it was this soon. Well, I’m hungry, and I’ve seen enough, and I haven’t seen near enough of him.

“Oh,” she laughs, when she sees me there. “Oh, are you gonna join us after all?”

I remove her bracelets, one wrist at a time, and hand them to Daniel. Best to get them out of the way now. She shakes, more from my touch than her lingering rapture. She looks at me with hope and disbelief – she finds me more attractive than she does Daniel, which is nearly always the case. I give her the same gentle smile I gave the rest of them.

“Come here,” I say, and I lift her by the shoulders until she’s sitting upright.

She gives a long, fluttering laugh when I come to sit behind her, and again when I move her hair behind one shoulder. She can hardly believe her luck. Her heart is racing once more. The moan that greets me when I kiss her skin is soft, nervous. She’s never had two lovers at once.

“I mean, are you just gonna sit there?” She’s talking to Daniel now.

I kiss her skin again, feel her relax into my arms.

“Yes,” I murmur.

My teeth sink into her, and she loves it. The swoon suits her, and as I drink and drink, she lies recumbent in my arms. The soft sighs and little moans I draw from her are delightfully earnest. She dies in ecstasy, never knowing why. Her blood is gorgeously spiced with alcohol, though not nearly enough to affect me. It would have done something very amusing to Daniel, if he... Oh, there’s a thought I’m not entertaining again. Not tonight.

Daniel is shaking, when my eyes open. To see me kill my mirror image, to see her die so gloriously, it strikes him to the core. It always does.

“Stay put,” I say, as though I need to.

I drag the girl’s body into the bathroom, drop it in the shower, seal the bite, and apply the little blades in my pocket. They were Daniel’s suggestion, these rectangular slips of steel – or rather, he mentioned their reputation, and I extrapolated their potential use, and they work so wonderfully. Drop them on the shower floor once you’re done, and you’ve got a scene right out of one of the more miserable television shows. We can’t use them too often, for the sake of statistics, but it’s fantastically convenient when we can.

The bracelets wouldn’t have hindered this – in the fiction I craft, they would have slid out of the way – but they certainly would’ve looked strange to whatever poor soul is going to find her. Best to allay suspicion; it won’t do to have the hotel staff wondering why she wanted to die in nothing but jewelry. When It is done, I press the cold metal between her fingertips for the benefit of the detectives, sliding them a little to make them impeccably imperfect. I throw the shower tap open and the curtain shut, close the door as I make my way back into the bedroom, and nothing more is said of it.

Daniel is shaking even harder now, both because dealing with the body still manages to spook him, and because he wants me to the point that it’s eating him alive. As I pull my clothing off on the way to the bed, he does the same. He’s down to his boxers when I arrive, and I recline lazily on the bed, watching quietly until he finishes. When he looks at me, I beckon him with a single finger.

“Come here,” I say, and he shivers.

I take the edge of the bedsheet and wipe the traces of lipstick from his face. They reach well across his cheek – precision was not our late companion’s specialty. As for the rest of it…

I slide my fingernail over the side of my wrist. Just a little cut over the artery, scarcely an inch long, hardly what I gave our girl. I hold it to his mouth, and he latches on the way he knows so well. His tongue laps at it, which is exactly what I want. This isn’t his little gift for the night. I have much better ideas for that.

He whines when I remove my arm, and he flinches forward so hard, his glasses nearly fall from his face. Such an obstacle, those things, but without them he is truly useless. I grab him by the back of the head and kiss him, now that I can, and he responds with such hunger, it sends a thrill of lust through me. It’s so good, when Daniel wants me.

He tastes of my blood, and nothing else. He’s so warm. His blood smells so good. I know I don’t need it, but I want it. Not that it isn’t already mine. He belongs to me. Unfortunately, he knows it; that’s why he keeps trying to run. He wants me to remind him, wants me to prove again and again that I’m real, that it’s all real. (I could give him the one reminder he could never, ever forget, and maybe he’d stop running, but I’ve decided not to think about that tonight.)

I sit up, move him with me, and wrap my arms around him. My lips press to the corner of his mouth, to his racing pulse, and with my less lethal teeth, I nip at his earlobe.

“Just a little,” I whisper. “Just a taste.”

He shivers, and I can hear something like a whimper deep in his chest. I smile, kiss his neck the way I did hers, and then bite. I can feel his moan echo under my teeth, his hand come up to my hair to try and keep me there. His blood is delicious, but the way he shakes and moans and all but begs for it is even sweeter. I have plans for later, though, ones that don’t include killing him tonight, and so I let go very quickly.

He half-sobs with disappointment, the way he always does. When I kiss the bite, lave my tongue over the little marks, he gasps just a little. I should close the cuts, but first I take a moment to savor the taste of him, trying to keep my self-control in place. I really am hungry for him. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken that little taste.

I close the bite with my next lick, before it becomes too tempting. Then I lie back again, take one of his hands in mine, and bring it to my mouth.

“I’m going to ride you,” I say, “but first, I want your fingers in me.”

He’s so quiet tonight; he doesn’t so much as nod. His mind is still wrapped in the memory of the girl, in the idea that I was human once, that I died in a way that might have resembled that. He’s wondering what it feels like, if he’ll ever get to feel it. I don’t bother answering any of this. I never do. I drag my tongue along my fang and slip his fingers into my mouth.

He watches transfixed as I take them in, and then at the heat of the blood on my tongue, he gasps. I wonder if he’ll ever stop being so in awe of it, how many times it will take before he gets used to it all. I lick the whole length of his fingers, sliding them out to ensure I reach the whole of them. I taste human sweat, I feel the little heartbeat under his skin, and I hear his soft exhale as I let them go. They’re coated in blood from my tongue, now, and we’ve done this so many times, he hardly hesitates before he reaches down and slides the first one into me.

They’re soft. All of him is soft, unquestionably mortal. I’m not going to imagine what it might be like, if things were different. I am not. I’m enjoying the size of them, the way his palm presses flat against me, and above all the way he kisses me as he moves them. Because it is both of them, now, and I don’t have any idea whether this is necessary to prepare the way anymore, and I have never bothered to find out. I like it. I always have.

His hair is short, bristling in the back under my fingertips, but nearer to the front I can get a grip on it. He kisses me with heat, with desire, and I know it’s because he can taste my blood. God, but he’s greedy. This is what he wants, I know, more than my body, more than my love. He wants to become me, to stop being the soft, breakable human who’s going to break me apart very shortly. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, when he kisses me like this.

I can feel it building, like iron turning red in the forge, the faltering curl of his fingers sending pleasure winding through me. My breathing hitches, shakes, and then it stops entirely. It takes him a moment to notice, even longer than it takes me. It unnerves him deeply when I do that, and indeed he makes to move his lips from mine. I beat him to it, drawing back and inhaling deeply, because I can, and because I want to breathe him in.

“Don’t stop,” I hiss, “don’t stop, don’t stop–” and then my mouth covers his again.

His hand doesn’t so much as slow, and I like that a lot. In the beginning, his muscles would tire fairly quickly. I feel my back start to bend upward, feel the bliss spread like crackles of electricity up my body. There’s something wonderfully strange, feeling such a _fragile_ thing bring me to the edge. It’s like the electrical wires, the kitchen appliances and intensely flammable cosmetic chemicals. Another product of this fantastic age for me to play with.

I moan loudly into his mouth when it hits me, and when I clench around his fingers his answering sound is nearly as loud. My body shakes, lifting up off the bed, and I take a long, indulgent moment to simply feel it. It’s decadent, the way I let him draw it from me, every pull of his fingertips sending another sweeping wave of pleasure through me. I’m not really kissing him now so much as holding our mouths very close together, so the quick, staccato sounds that leave me reach the open air.

My body falls down, and Daniel slows to a stop. I release his hair and watch him all but lick his lips as he moves down. His hand leaves me, but his tongue slides across the skin of my hips and stomach, lapping up the streaks of red. He looks at me with eyes that are almost desperate, and I want him in ways I refuse to define.

My eyes flick to his jacket, tossed on the floor with the rest of his clothing. In a clumsy rush, he retrieves the prophylactic stashed in the pocket – more for my benefit than his. I don’t look as he slides it on. It always feels like I’m being cheated just a little, but I know he’s being cheated even more. The alternative is even less appealing, however, and it will continue to be, unless – _not thinking about it._

“Sit.”

I motion to the headboard, and as he sits back against it, he nudges his glasses further up his nose. I slide my hands up his arms as I climb into his lap, and then over his shoulders until I reach his neck. With a smile, I press the pad of one thumb to the raised edge of his collarbone, and then up it glides until it reaches the side of his jaw, so I can tilt his head up and better see his throat.

He shivers hard, and a thready whine escapes his half-open mouth. I press my lips to his neck, and he shouts, but I do not bite. I kiss him the way mortals do, the way our guest had wanted to do before he brushed her off. He can probably feel the edge of my teeth, but I don’t taste his blood. I don’t need to.

He’s so tempting, so utterly enticing that I shiver at the feeling of his human warmth, the smell of his human blood. He doesn’t know his own beauty, my Daniel. He doesn’t know what he does to me. Surely, he’s figured out at least part of it. Does he think I’ve ever welcomed another mortal’s touch the way I welcome his?

“Armand,” he says, his voice a choked whisper, “Armand, _please_.”

I laugh softly. He’s always desperate for me in some way, when we bring another mortal into our bed. Usually his body has been exhausted so thoroughly, it’s only my blood he craves. Sometimes he’ll want my kisses, want to give me his hands or his mouth and prove to himself that the sight of him aroused me. There are a number of things he might want tonight, but even if I could not simply scan him, I think I know what he’s asking for now.

“Tell me what you want, Daniel.”

But this way is much more fun.

He makes an anguished noise, and there’s a flicker of frustration in his expression, the kind that often tells me he’s going to run away again soon. I have hated that look each time I’ve seen it, and I don’t love it any more now. But then his hands come up around my back in a frantic, if futile, attempt to keep me close. As though my weight isn’t keeping him all but immobilized.

“Fuck me,” he breathes into my ear. “Want to feel you. Want to _taste_ you.”

“You’ve already tasted me,” I say, even as I reach down between his legs. He gives a soft huff. He knows I’m teasing, or at least he hopes I am.

I take him in one hand and lower myself onto him, my soft sigh contrasting beautifully with the way he cries out. My skin probably feels warm to him, since I’ve just fed, but it’s nothing like the heat he’s feeling now. No matter how many times we do this, he always seems so astonished by it, by me. His head has fallen back again, and he’s gasping for breath, but his hands clutch at me. His silence begins to give way to ceaseless whispering, interspersed with helpless, breathless moans.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he gasps, and then he gasps again when I start to move, “oh fuck, that’s – _ah_ …”

His hands stay around me, holding me with what could be tenderness, or could simply be human frailty. He feels dreadfully breakable, especially pinned under the solid, ancient stone of my body. I love it. I love the touch of him, love the way his pliable, blood-filled flesh curves when pressed, bends to the shape of me where my skin meets his. I love the way he feels in me, lighting the forge inside me again as I swivel and grind. I love _him_ , the way a child loves a favorite doll, the way a predator loves their prey, the way the monster loves the man.

Daniel’s nails do their best to scratch at my skin, and as his eyes pinch tightly shut, I hear him keen softly. When they open again, he looks at me with something very close to despair, and he bites the corner of his lip for a moment before speaking again.

“You…” he says the word almost reverently. “You, god, you’re so…”

“I know.” I smile softly at him, because he’s so thoroughly himself, in these moments.

I bring both hands to his face and kiss him, pressing us together so that there’s hardly an inch of skin between us that doesn’t touch. As best he can, he moves his hips beneath me, holds me tightly to him, tries to feel as much of me as he can. The way he kisses me is desperate, almost messy, and the sounds that leave him now are near to pleading. I take the briefest glance into his mind, and a flood of desire pours into me. _It’s not enough, it’s not enough, I need **more.**_

Oh, he is mine.

I let him go, move my lips to his neck again, and with a litany of “please, god, please” in my ear, I bite down. The carnality, the rich lust and pleasure flowing through him is so much more intoxicating than simple alcohol. I’m pressed so hard against him, every time I move there’s glorious friction between us. I feel his mouth on my own neck, the living heat of him, soft lips, dull human teeth. I know what he wants, but his imploring kisses feel too good to stop. But then, they do, and his voice resonates against my skin, strained to its limit and fighting for breath.

“ _AH,_ fuck! …oh, I –– god, I’m coming, _please_ –”  

Quick as lightning, my nail cuts deeply into the skin of my neck, and before it’s even gone he seals his lips around the cut. His tongue slides deep into the wound, and it presses, and it _presses_ , and I moan so loudly, it makes me realize how quiet I’ve been since I climbed atop him. So, of course, he does it again, and his body is shaking, spasming with bliss as I cry out. His blood is suffused with his ecstasy, and it tastes so good, I fear for a moment I’m going to take too much. But my blood is already in his mouth, and what a way to finally make him mine, _really_ mine–

I come apart with my teeth buried in him, snarling like the monster I am, holding his head in place as I grind down onto him. While my mind is drenched with blood and pleasure, I let myself think about it, about how this would feel if my Daniel had teeth of his own to give me. What would happen if we just continued like this, my blood and his combining until there was nothing to separate us? It’s a sweet sort of fantasy, one that fuels the fire in my heart, as well as my body, and I don’t want it to end. When at last it leaves me, I open my eyes and see that I’m holding him tightly enough to bruise that frail mortal skin.

I lift his head, feel the cut close, and because I feel so indulgent, I let him taste the little drops left behind as I close his bite. He kisses me soundly, so that we each taste ourselves, and he hasn’t let me go just yet, though he will need to very shortly. He will need to clean himself, and we will need to leave this place, and then perhaps we can go back home and watch one of the movies I’ve collected. Perhaps he’ll still want to kiss me, the way he’s kissing me now. Perhaps I’ll still be in any mood to let him. Of course, he chooses this moment to pull back, and the spell is nearly broken, but then he speaks.

“I love you,” mumbled sleepily against my lips, and then he’s kissing me again.

I am astonished in ways I’m not sure I like. I tell him the same thing with some frequency, but I’ve heard him speak the words perhaps twice. It’s only once he’s tasted my blood, that he says it. Only after I’ve rendered him exhausted and glowing like this. Only after I’ve given him what he wants, at least in part. Both times, he ran away within the following week.

“You’re mine,” I whisper, cradling his face in my hands. “ _Mine._ ”

I don’t think about why I say it, but I don’t have to. The twist of fear deep in my chest tells me everything. I’m already imagining what he might do, if he ran from me again, how far he might run, how long he might go without sleep or food this time, and I hate the very idea of it. I hate even more what might happen if he finally runs too far for me to find him in time. The thought alone is painful, the human fragility I love so much turned against me. I can’t stand the thought of losing him for good.

…There’s only one way to ensure that I don’t, isn’t there?

But, I’m not thinking about that. Not tonight.


End file.
